Category Archives: Current Events

An Open Letter To The President

Current Events, Humanity, Natural Disaster, Politics, ,

April 13, 2020

Dear President Trump,

Please don’t be concerned with defending yourself against those who truly wish to bring you down for various and sundry reasons- most of them political.  Your constituency does not care what they think, and it is painful to watch you spending your precious time and energy on them building a case for yourself.  Though, personally, I hate being misunderstood and can only hope that I would bear up under the same temptation.

You are well loved and respected by many who know you directly and by many who don’t, as well as by many great minds- and through your leadership during this extremely difficult period in the history of the world, by most who voted for you and by many who did not vote for you.  It is difficult to believe that the worst enemy of our nation would have wished upon your presidency, upon our country, such a terrific crisis.

You do not need to put aside any more of anyone’s expensive time, particularly your own, trying to reason with those who continually disagree with you and are possibly intent on creating dissension.

I, for one, am honestly grateful for your fine leadership at this challenging time.  I continue to pray for you, and for your family, and for all members of your staff.

May God bless you, and may God continue to bless America,

L. L. Shelton

Contagious!

Current Events, Family Life, Health, Health & Disease, Mental-Physical-Spiritual Health, , ,

REPORT FROM LOS ALAMOS:

An RO of 6! Yikes! Is it time to panic?!?

  1. Regarding public health and disease, what is an R0 (r-naught)? It is a label for an infectious disease that tells us that each person with that particular illness will possibly-even probably- infect a certain number of other people.
  2. Why is it important to know the actual RO of SARS-cov-2; to know the rate at which it would spread if we were not practicing social distancing? Because the original number, before mitigation, in other words before we practiced social distancing, tells us what would happen if we were NOT practicing staying apart from one another.
  3. What is the ACTUAL RO of the virus that causes COVID-19? According to the report and Vice-President Pence’s confirmation of it, yesterday at the White House briefing, the task force has known from the beginning that SARS-cov-2 has an RO of six.  THAT is why the mitigation, in other words- staying apart from one another- has been extremely important.  Also, they knew less then about the effects of the virus and though more is known now, there is still so much more to know.
  4. What is the RO of SARS-cov-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) with mitigation, in other words because we are practicing staying away from one another? The RO with mitigation in place was at 2.28 and has dropped to between 1 and 2.
  5. Is there any more good news?  Yes.  When the test that will count the evidence of a person’s anti-bodies to the virus is available, we will test a large population of those who have been exposed but did not appear to become sick or seriously ill. Then we will know approximately how many people catch the virus and do not get sick, or contract COVID-19  and are only mildly affected.  This is important because a high RO such as six would be much less dangerous if it applies to a disease that is often only mildly experienced.  The need for drastic mitigation may be reduced in the future when this particular strain of Coronavirus returns.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.07.20021154v1.full.pdf

        L.L.  Shelton, 2020.

Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19)

Current Events, Education, Health & Disease, , , , , , ,

Maybe I was taught logic in school or maybe I learned critical thinking while I taught it to my children as part of their education- either way, I’m thankful in light of current events.

Please consider these thoughts whether you are among the “this is the greatest hoax the world has ever known” population or the “this is happening- it is not a drill- take it seriously” group.

    1. If you are among the first group you must ask yourself, “why?” Who are “they” and why would they orchestrate such a thing?  Would it be to have an excuse to enact Marshall law in democratic nations? Would it be to target the nearly useless (if there is such a thing) among humanity and eliminate them? Would it be to provide a reason to stop Christian and Spiritual gatherings? Again, why?
    2. If you are among the second demographic, once more you must ask yourself, “why?” IT being the COVID-19 virus; is it because as the old rhyme heralds and knowing now that IT is more dangerous to the general population than the flu, “round and round and round IT goes, where IT stops nobody knows?”
    3. If you think it could be both-why might it be both?
    4. Having done this, it is your responsibility to pray, to stay calm, to follow instructions (if none is asking you to sin), to prepare to the best of your ability to provide for those closest to you and that you may help any in need.

Home Sweet Home

Current Events, Education, Politics

I love us, America. I love that we are a constitutional republic which allows us to be a representative democracy. We are not “majority rule” (a direct or pure democracy) as the majority may be misguided or of evil intent. We are a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” meaning a government that recognizes that the majority may be wrong and therefore places some constraint on the will of the people, while at the same time allowing the people a powerful voice. The constitution itself is a primary form of constraint. We should delight in the fact that something is resistant toward us when we are in error. We should take joy in knowing that our founding fathers took great pains to ensure our empowerment when we are treating one another properly, and to provide for our restraint when we are bound to harm one another.

We are a young and grand social experiment- and the most promising trial of a national government ever to have existed. May God continue to bless and to help us to keep our particularly beautiful way of life!

I know that I would rather live here than anywhere else on earth. Other places may be nice to visit, but there is no place like home. 🇺🇸

Cheers to Bridges

Current Events, Essay and Prose, Humanity

Is Facebook destroying true intimacy? Is social media creating a false sense of community?

Only if one is not thinking…

When I like or love someone’s post on Facebook (or other social media), I’m not trying to imply a sense of intimacy. It doesn’t mean that I know the person well and love everything about him or that I’ll be expecting to be invited to holiday dinners- or even that I would want to be invited. I’m showing only that I like (or love) what he has expressed here, or I stand with him in this particular thing. When I touch the emoticon representative of a person consumed with laughter- I’m thanking a person for sharing some of the best medicine of my day! When I hit the angry face, it’s because what is portrayed frustrates me. I touch the sad face when I am moved to tears by something shared and the hands clasped in prayer when I know it is the needed answer. When I offer a comment, I say what I mean and I mean what I say. Social media is a tool and like any other tool, it has no power of its own- the power is in the hand of the one who wields the tool. I don’t think I have a false sense of the community being built here, rather I know it is a bridge to community. I like bridges- a bridge can be destroyed if it becomes dangerous but a bridge is usually a wonderful idea.

Copyright 2018. L.L. Shelton.

35 WAYS FOR THE CHURCH TO HELP MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN:

Bible Talk, Church Culture, Current Events, Family Life, Living the Word, Mental-Physical-Spiritual Health, Poetry

1. Stop expecting, worse desiring, for our government to do everything.
2. For all of our sakes STOP asking our government to do it all.
3. Eat and drink carefully and healthily, exercise twenty minutes, and study God’s Word each day in an attempt to keep ourselves in optimal health, to be of service to others.
4. Grow a portion of our own food.
5. If we are able to grow extra food- share it with our neighbors.
6. Buy from local food sources and producers.
7. Eat out at restaurants that serve only what is grown locally.
8. Start a local food pantry to collect from those who have much and redistribute to those who have little.
9. If we are fortunate enough to have opportunity and funding for regular preventative medical care, avail ourselves of the services.
10. If we are healthy and another is not, do what we can personally, to alleviate the person’s discomfort- particularly if this person is our own family member, but certainly do not limit our love and provision to our own.
11. Do our good works among our own and expand outward to others.
12. Start a medical fund in our local church and use it to help those in health crisis, within and outside the Body, who have no (or insufficient) medical coverage.
13. If we have an extra room, share it with someone who has no home of his or her own- particularly if this is a person (or family unit) from our own tribe, and certainly if the person is not in need of constant care or medical attention.
14. If we can afford to hire someone or to offer private care ourselves, open our home to someone needing constant care or who is dependent on medical aid. If the person has a home, supply care in his or her place of residence.
15. If we have an extra house or property of some kind… do we really need to talk about this?
16. Insist that able-bodied-minded persons work for their room and board.
17. If we have a dependable vehicle that is not fully and usefully employed- share it! At the least consider offering someone who is dependent on public transportation a regular ride.
18. Better yet- ditch our gas guzzling vehicle that helps to keep us dependent on foreign oil and/or fracking at home with the possibility of helping to create earthquakes, and cheerfully support public transportation with our tax dollars and our voluntary commitment to it.
19. Support alternative energy research and development.
20. Repair, re-use, recycle!
21. Turn our A/C up and our heat down 2-3 degrees. Give the money we save to someone who has less than we do.
22. Build a lending library of some kind and be sharers! Do this with our local church body and share with the community at large.
23. Educate our own children well.
24. Anytime we have opportunity, faithfully tutor someone else’s child. This can be done simply by seizing a teachable moment, or on a formal schedule of some kind.
25. If we are an employer, provide for the NEEDS of our own family members and those of our employees BEFORE providing extravagances for our family and those closest to us.
26. When someone from our own small society becomes pregnant outside of marriage- particularly with no criminal offense having taken place, assist the person ourselves in managing the pregnancy, the birth, and the rearing of the child, hopefully with the aid of our local church body.
27. Start an adoption fund in our local church and offer financial aid to Christians willing and desiring to open their homes to orphaned children.
28. Be especially supportive of widows, and encourage young widows OF THE FAITH to marry again.
29. Stop insisting that people get married for reasons that are unbiblical. Marriage is for Believers.
30. Stop penalizing people for being unmarried. Support the single members of your group in their choice to remain single. Support Civil Unions.
31. Offer singles and those choosing civil unions, family time with our families in our homes. If they are not Christian, so much the better, we can be like Jesus and offer a witness to The Gospel. (If you are strong, go into their territory when invited and enjoy them while offering a witness to The Gospel. This is not fellowship. Fellowship assumes like-mindedness.)
32. Stop expecting unbelievers to think and behave like we do.
33. Understand that those who are born into suffering are there, in part, to teach us selflessness and patience, and to help us learn to be servant-hearted.
34. As a rule, where and when possible, share with those outside the Church, and faithfully share The Gospel along the way.
35. Set an example of being kind to anyone and anything living- in this way we will nurture life and discourage a culture of death.

At the least, let our speech be encouraging, building up those around us rather than tearing them down. May GOD help us to make America great, and please LORD, let it begin in me.

Copyright 2018. L. L. Shelton.

Further Reflections On Charlottesville

Current Events, , , , , , ,

Due to the outcome of our Civil War, the preservation of our nation, we are each subject to a greater society- that of The United States of America, and the government of such has grown to include ideological territory far beyond the original intent of “protection and defense against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

We are each subject to a larger community of feeling, thought, and behavior- in short, subject to one another, and therefore affected by one another, and feeling some degree of ownership of one another’s corporate possessions and territories. We can not flee the inconveniences of the union and yet embrace its benefits. The advantages and disadvantages of the union are part and parcel.

The statue belongs first to Charlottesville and then to Albemarie county (where sits the University of Virginia, the campus having been designed by likely the states most famous resident, multi-slave owner, Thomas Jefferson), next it belongs to Virginia, and then to the United States of America; and the ripple effect of decisions concerning said statue will be felt in varying degree from sea to shining sea. This should be no surprise. An absolute division of one citizen from another is logistically impossible.

And may I respectfully submit to you that this would be the case no matter the outcome of our own civil war? The truth of our interrelatedness by virtue of our existence has been screaming in the heads of humanity’s empaths throughout the ages. Many of these are our poets, our priests, our philosophers and our theologians, our artists of various type and persuasion.

Many empaths are themselves writer’s and there have been those others fascinated by the empath’s words and expressions who have labored to preserve them. Their work is overflowing with the passionate plea to recognize our genuine connectedness and our inability to escape it, and the need to therefore bend with it when all but sin will allow, as in honoring and respecting one another we honor and respect ourselves.

Now it appears that some felt that my earlier remarks on this subject indicated a callous disregard for the feelings of those who are opposed to the statue’s position in the town park, maybe even to those injured during the eruption of evil occurring there on Saturday. I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. It should go without saying that hate and violence are not only mean, but are a recipe for disaster as to mistreat and despise one’s fellow human is as detrimental to one as is wounding and abhorring oneself.  I am most of all opposed to such things.

I simply hope to encourage our depth of thought surrounding our activities- a search for patterns and predictable precedents that we may make the best use of our resources, and in conclusion, ask that we thoroughly consider, as we can not completely separate from one another nor from our collective past, in this case as well as in every situation like it, what may best serve all.

Copyright 2017. L.L. Shelton.

Reflecting On Charlottesville

Current Events, Holistic Health, Humanity, Poetry, , , , , , ,

Please do not insist that we remove every reminder of our struggle to be who we ought. Leave us traces of our wrong-doing in the form of art. Let some things stand to help us to recollect who we do not want to be and wish we never had been. These are fine artifacts as they exist to teach; to show us a history we hope never to repeat.

Perhaps in our desire to do away with every unpleasant memory we may do ourselves and our posterity great harm. What if the Bible is truth and its explanation of wickedness beginning in us, originating in human beings of each and every color is accurate? What then if there is nothing to bring this truth to mind? Would we not be destined to replicate many difficult and painful lessons should be already learned?

Let us think carefully before rendering our past free of hard things. For memory is not restricted to the past; it exists also to inform the future, and to ignore this aspect of memory, to relegate this valuable tool of the mind to a place of obscurity is a fool’s game.

Rather, let us stare appalled. Let us gaze aghast at these moments in our corporate story and at similar happenings in our individual stories, and let us fall to our knees and beg God to help us to come to healthy terms with the knowledge, and with ourselves, that these hideous and contemptuous events may never again occur.

Copyright 2017. L.L. Shelton.

CNN and Other Stupidity

Current Events, Natural Disaster, , , ,

Tonight, as I rapidly walk the treadmill at our local Planet Fitness, I spy a headline from CNN (The self-proclaimed, Central News Network). The headline reads:  Church-goers Saved From the Tornado By the Grace of God.  (Did I fall asleep and wake up in the days of the new Constantine?)

I avoid the news at home because it tends to invigorate me to an unacceptable point.  Also, I am intentionally considerate of my younger children, who I am with nearly always, not wishing to subject them to a constant barrage of suggestions for how they should think about the current events.  I avoid channels allowing commercials for similar reasons.

But I don’t suppose it my right to suggest these same strategies to Planet Fitness to aid their fully adult, and hopefully engaged and thoughtful  patrons.

Now to the original intent of this post- exactly how is it that CNN knows the mind of God so very well? Did He drop in for a quick visit with Ted Turner and explain Himself?

Dear Families and Friends of the eight who were killed due to the storm, please know that Our Bible states plainly that God rains on the just and the unjust and that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, His ways higher than our ways… please know that He is for every man, though He does specifically bless His saved children with eternal life and many other things.  Many choose to be an enemy of God, but God is the enemy of no man.

In truth, we have no idea why God spared those He spared and took those He took. So what? He is God and we are not.

Please accept the sympathy of this Jesus-loving, church-goer over your loss, and may God be with you to comfort and help you in your tremendous grief.

Copyright 2017.   L.L. Shelton.